


Terrifying Tolkien Week 2017

by RoseoftheBrightSea



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dwarves, F/M, Hunting, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Petty Dwarves - Freeform, Psychological Horror, Sindar, Terrifying Tolkien Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-23 05:43:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12500096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseoftheBrightSea/pseuds/RoseoftheBrightSea
Summary: My submissions to Terrifying Tolkien Week. Not as long as I'd like, but hopefully satisfactory all the same.





	1. All Shall Fade

It was not him, not truly. The Enemy, in his horrid and broken form, was leagues away, reigning in Dol Guldur. The hands which had burned her beloved home and wrung the life from her cherished cousin were unable to touch her, but Celebrían could still feel the Abhorred. Ghost-like fingers brushed against her cheek, almost tenderly. It bore a painful resemblance to her lady mother’s touch, the way she greeted Celebrían after a prolonged separation, carefully searching for any sign of ill-fortune. Celebrían’s own children told her she treated them in a similar manner. To think that such a monster could replicate such delicate affection made her shudder with fury and revulsion.

“How little you have changed, aiwë.” It was a strange thing to say. The last time Celebrían had seen him—Annatar, he had been Annatar even then—she had been clean and well-dressed, without ugly wounds or bruises to mark her flesh or blood to dye her hair a crusty red. Yet her disbelief was overcome by her anger. That was Tyelpe’s name for me, never yours. “Though your fëa remains youthful, they tell me you are a mother now.”

Celebrían grasped as the shadowy hand trailed between her legs. A false weight rested against her inner thigh, threatening to climb higher if she dared to move. “Perhaps I should have you brought to me. Shall I give you a little Lúthien?”

“I would die before you could,” Celebrían whispered. It was no mere threat. She would depart for the Halls of Mandos before he could sire a child on her, following her uncles and cousins. Her parents and Elrond would understand, as would Erestor and Glorfindel. They would help the children come to realize why she might abdicate this life.

Sauron’s shade almost snarled, but twisted the sound into a laugh. “So you would. But I have no intention of sending you to Námo. No, child, I will make an experiment out of you. The Eldar are so long-lived. Your pain gradually accumulates, but you have the time to process it, to fit it neatly into your little minds. Yet if it were to come crashing down all at once,” he paused and Celebrían felt false fingers tap against her temple, “How long could you withstand it? How long would it take you to realize the joke of your immortality?”

There was no time to formulate a response. A sharp pain shot through her chest, at first as cold as ice. Then it burned. Every part of her, body and mind, was aflame with the relentless intensity of whatever fire Sauron had kindled within her. As it grew, so did her senses begin to distort until sound, vision, and touch were incomprehensible flashes of some existence Celebrían could no longer identify. It was as if her sense of self had ripped in twain and the Abhorred had taken advantage of that tear in consciousness to place another within.

That was the true terror. It was as if her own fëa had been burnt from her hröa, leaving another in its place, filling Celebrían with memories that did not belong to her. Yet they could not belong to just one other, either. Rather, she was filled with countless memories of a single event, then another, the sheer immensity of them all shattering what little awareness she had left.

She saw rushing waves the color of blood from a thousand different perspectives, was simultaneously burned and drowned, and felt countless blades, arrowheads, and javelins pierce her skin at once. Her throat went raw with hundreds of screams that were not her own, while her ears went deaf from the impact of hundreds of others. So, too, was she engulfed by pangs of guilt, horror, heartbreak. Emotions Celebrían knew no words for flooded her awareness. 

“You should know some of these faces,” Sauron’s voice crept into the onslaught of visions, barely recognizable.

Celebrían did. She could not recognize them in that moment, but brief flashes of her mother and father passed before her, strangers with Galadriel’s lips or Celeborn’s nose, Círdan weeping, a young incarnation of her husband huddling with his brother, Celebrimbor bleeding and hanging from chains. Men the color of blood and smoke, women strung up by their pearls – so many strangers, yet all familiar. All wrought in misery.

“And for what?” The Enemy’s voice was like liquid gold, beautiful and scalding. “What was the worth of this all to your kind, you who are bound to Eä?”

Without warning, the storm of memories were ripped away. Celebrían’s own senses did not return, nor did her own memories resurface. She was left in dead silence and sheer darkness, without a sense of direction, nor even where her own self ended. It was as if she was suspended in nothingness. Alone. Hollow. Empty.

The trance was broken with a simple phrase, murmured more like a prayer than a curse. “All shall fade.”

Terror did not seep in until she was returned to her proper awareness. Celebrían did not know how much time had passed, nor did she think to care. She was not aware of the odd jut of her wrist, nor the way her skin had gone grey and hung so fragilely on delicate bone. Even the harsh glint of Sauron’s eyes went unnoticed.

“You lasted longer than I might have thought, aiwë.” She did not react to the name. “How misery suits you. I am afraid I cannot continue on with the story, though. The two babes who have entered the camp are too young for it, are they not? Perhaps their mother can sing it for them once she has regained her voice.”

The shade laughed when she did not respond. “Or perhaps not.”


	2. Stars Hide Your Fires

“Who’s there?”

The words echoed back, bouncing off the cave’s walls and back to their wraith-like owner. His voice was still beautiful, even after all the years of disuse — it was the only beautiful thing left about him. What little was left of his once soft, raven-like hair had gone brittle and gnarled from the years of inattention. His skin, once smooth and clear, was now grey and almost translucent. So, too, had his body lost its shape, leaving its fëa trapped in a prison made of jutting bone. The pitiful creature had a fire lit before him, but the shadow he cast was barely noticeable, as if he were not truly there. Yet he was sure something else was. Rocks did not tumble on their own in the little sea-side cave, not the way he had heard. Nor did they hum.

A voice sang back, “The prince of stars came from afar, to where his treasures are.”

It was a broken sound. Beautiful in its own way and painfully familiar, but there was a haunting element to the intruder’s voice, as well. It was not quite desperation or heartbreak, but rather, aimless, as if the singer knew not who he was singing for. The voice was empty, hollowed of memories and joys.

“Where are you?” The cave-dweller asked again, but the singer had not stopped and did not pause to answer.

“A pretty light, his father’s delight, worth a thousand fights. A thousand deaths, a thousand last breaths, to clutch them at his chest,” the voice continued. “He killed a king, he killed a queen, and sent their people fleeing. Then killed them, too, but what can you do? That was the lot he drew.”

During the song, the intruder stepped out from the shadows. He was a willowy thing, decaying and horrid, much like the cave-dweller, though where the latter’s hair was a greying black, the former’s hair had always been pale. The original occupant of the cave stepped back when he caught sight of the silvery blade, which reflected the fire’s dancing flames.

“Stay back,” he called, his voice high and tight. “Please, don’t…”

Don’t what? he wondered. Come closer? Make me remember? There was nothing to remember, he told himself. He was but a nameless wraith, an echo from the eras past. He was the one without a name or history. Yet still the stranger came forward, dagger glistening.

“But now my blade will revenge the spades, which the smith’s son sent to any early grave. Never will he sail the seas, never will he see the trees, but at least he will be free.”

When the blade slipped between his ribs, the cave-dweller barely felt it. The air went out of him with a quiet sigh, the life following in turn, dying the only remaining piece of clothing that he had owned red, turning the Fëanorian star the same color as the fires.


	3. The Wild Hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a day late, but personally, this is the most terrifying one I think I've written yet. I think the Sindar's hunting of the petty dwarves gets overlooked a lot, so here's... that.

“Take Flet and run.” He was gripping her arm so tightly that she could no longer feel her fingertips. “Go to the tunnels and do not look back. No matter what.”

“What of you?”

She knew the answer before it was spoken, yet it hurt all the same. “I will fend them off for as long as I can.”

“You will die.” They would all die. It was only a matter of time until the gods of death hunted them all into extinction, with only their bones left in the pale monsters’ forest-homes, hung as trophies of the hunt. “Come with us. Live, even if only for today.”

“Some must stay to buy you time.” He glanced at the small child hiding in her skirts. How foolish it had been to bring a child into the world, how cruel.

“Then you take Flet and go,” she protested. “Let me stay.”

He shook his head, his heart breaking at her request. “I cannot.”

“Why? Because I—” 

It was too reckless to speak of such things in the child’s hearing and far too dangerous to be wasting time on such arguments. He hugged her close and whispered in her ear. “They will cease their hunt for the day if they take home enough bodies. You cannot ask me to make a sacrifice of you.”

“And yet you ask me to make one of you?”

But the gods of death and their silver blades came on fierce, black-eyed beasts and made sacrifices of them all.


	4. The Iron Price

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOT CANON, NOT A HEADCANON, JUST FOR TERRIFYING TOLKIEN

Nandië sighed with contentment as her liege and husband rose from the bed, leaving his seed to slicken her thighs. She prayed a son would result from the deed, one as strong and brave as his father, who could prove a worthy successor to Elros. Tar-Minyatur, she thought with a smile.

The king slung a robe of bright blue over his shoulders, but it hung slack, proudly displaying his nakedness. Nandië smile brightened at the sight, though her attention was quickly drawn to the necklace around his chest. The gold which made up the chain was same color as her pale roses, which were planted just below the window. Its pendant was a simple thing, some coin of old, and yet Nandië had never seen Elros without it. Even in their coupling, it remained around his neck, sometimes resting upon her own skin.

“May I ask, your royal highness, the origin of your necklace?”

Elros looked surprised by the request. Then he smiled. Bright teeth flashed in the candle light, making Nandië shiver despite the fur blankets around her. “This is my first war prize. My original treasure.”

“Treasure?” Nandië questioned. Elros returned to the bed, tugging away her blankets and tracing her ankle lightly.

“Indeed.” A feral grin made its way onto the young king’s face. “My foster fathers would bring my back treasures won by iron, but they were never mine. Not truly. Jewels mean nothing unless they are hard won with your own hand.”

“Mined?”

Elros laughed. “No, not that.” With dark eyes, he flipped her over. Already he was growing hard again. “This belonged to the first man I ever killed. Took it from his still warm body, I even cleaned the blood off of it myself.”

Nandië’s blood went cold at the thought of Elros looting a corpse, but he laughed at the sudden tension and bit down on her pulse point. “I see,” she whispered.

“How can you? That thrill, that power.” Nandië did not moan as he entered her for a second time. “To extract the iron price… That is something no woman can know.”

The second time he spilt his seed, Nandië prayed no child would come from it. A child conceived in bloodlust would never do.


	5. Beauty is Terror

“You will be beautiful, Ara, just like Curufinwë.” That was praise. Praise always contained his brother’s name when it came from his father’s lips. Fëanor was beauty, not just to the king, but to all of the Noldor.

In time, Finwë’s words proved true. The word was soon directed towards him as well. Like his brother but golden, Tirion said. Beautiful.

Arafinwë looked upon the wreckage of Alqualondë. He saw the blood stains, the floating corpses, and the billowing smoke. Everything Fëanor did was beautiful. Fëanor defined beauty. Arafinwë smiled at the thought.  _I am not beautiful, after all then._


End file.
